THE PERFECT AMOUNT OF LIFE

There is an insect that will live for just a day. Which might be the perfect amount of life for a person. But is rather too long for the insect. Size misconstrues the familiarity of all things living. A homeless philosopher with flies on his face said that. Or was it a philosopher fly on a sprig of parsley?

One day, our science will discover a method to extract the masterpieces of the insect kingdom from their minuscule proportions and we will finally be able to glean their most important and universal themes: thirsting, slavering, fucking, and remembering the morning…

THE WORST PART

The worst part of life is not hearing what other people say about you when you’re not there...
I spend my days putting my ear on walls, on floors, on strangers’ pillows, listening to the vibrations...
I woke up in the middle of a glamorous department store on fire and I heard screaming and screaming, but I couldn’t hear my name...

BURN MONEY, KILL CEOs, DIE HAPPY

This meadow is beautiful. A creek trickles through the woods that are eternal-seeming. So many things give trees sound. Today it is the cicadas doing it. They wait years and years and then they wake up at precisely when they should with the screaming alarm clock of their desire. Wouldn’t it be nice to be so punctual?

Shane Kowalski lives in Pennsylvania. He is the author of the story collection Small Moods (Future Tense Books, 2022).